MSE News: Solar subsidies to be slashed under government plans

jimjames

tomny wrote: »

The final date for getting all your paperwork in to your electricity supplier appears to be the 11 December (not the 12th as that's too late).

However the 11 December is a Sunday. Does this mean that in effect the last date for getting your paperwork to your supplier after having panels fitted is Friday the 9th December?

I'm having my panels fitted on the 5th so would have very little time to get stuff in.

Why such a short cut-off? There must be quite a few folk in my position. We've already paid our deposits up-front and are after the 7 day cooling off period!

If we have a period of bad weather then some people are not going to get their installations on time.

Surely a better way would be pick a date from when you sign up for an installation? Is this change being badly managed? I can see total chaos in the next few weeks for installers and the industry.

Oh well, life goes on.

We are still in the process of sorting our application but the install is guaranteed before the cut off or deposit will be refunded. It looks like quite a few installers are putting on extra teams, longer hours etc so could be a lot of tired people about.

I thought it might be worth listing FIT registration suppliers and their address/locations for sending documents to in case we need to deliver by hand to ensure they get them in time.

E.ON UK
E.ON FIT Team
Caxton Road
Bedford
Bedfordshire

FIT Admin Team
npower
FREEPOST MID211 22/6
Worcester
WR4 9Z

British Gas
Feed'in'Tariff
97 Talbot'Road,Manchester M160TW.

So depending on your location you may be better off with one you can deliver to in person

LV_Sue

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Are the properties in a conservation area/national park, listed buildings or have very old roofs ? ..... if not, ring the council and ask to speak urgently to the planning director and mention 'permitted development' as applicable to pv systems, mention the December deadline and ask for an immediate decision on what they require from you, if anything ..... your installer will/should have the structual calculations done for you and will/should sign off the work against building regs, so talk to your installer, quickly ... my guess is that all installers will be working weekends and overtime for the next month as a result of their order books filling up over the next few days. At a point soon, they'll all stop accepting orders, or not provide any form of guarantee that the installation will be completed in time, so every hour counts ... the alternative, relax, sit back, and wait for the prices to fall ....


HTH
Z

No, the houses are not in conservation area/national park, listed buildings or have very old roofs. It's just our Council deciding they can make some extra money out of their poor Council Tax payers. There are at least 2 householders that I know of in the area that are taking the Council to court over their demand that the home owners remove their solar panels because they didn't have permission to install them! Neither of them in a Conservation area either!
I will ring my local council in the morning though and try to speak to the planning director as you suggest . Thanks.

newtonflotman

Ordered a pv system in early Sept, paid deposit. System requires micro-invertors due due slight shading issues. Thats the problem Inecsys have been struggling to get enough micro-invertors in the market since they had a manufacturing issue. Was originally told would get micro-invertors 27 Oct but now told early December. In-line invertor would not make system efficient enough. Not much chance on meeting the Deadline !! Told installer will cancel if no chance getting all paperwork done before deadline. Before you all bite its all for the rich !!! It would of been a 1.5kw system 6X250w Sanyo HIT panels with Enecsys micro-invertors for £6500 with a payback of 7.1 years. And yes I had arranged to borrow the money!

grumpyoldsteve

jimjames wrote: »

I thought it might be worth listing FIT registration suppliers and their address/locations for sending documents to in case we need to deliver by hand to ensure they get them in time.

E.ON UK
E.ON FIT Team
Caxton Road
Bedford
Bedfordshire

FIT Admin Team
npower
FREEPOST MID211 22/6
Worcester
WR4 9Z

British Gas
Feed'in'Tariff
97 Talbot'Road,Manchester M160TW.

So depending on your location you may be better off with one you can deliver to in person

British Gas can do it all via email at the following email address.
feedintariff@britishgas.co.uk

They send you electronic versions of the relevant forms which you fill in print and sign, scan them back in (obviously need a scanner on your computer) then you email them back with an electronic/scanned in copy of your MCS certificate and final invoice. Job done with a 2 to 3 day turnaround :cool:

John_Pierpoint

Today's (Tuesday) BBC R4 "Farming Today" features land owners being "caught" by the premature cancellation of the FiT deal:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016ld4l#synopsis

The possible get outs are discussed.

jamesd

From the consultation document the expected cost of the FiT is £357 million in 2014-5. There are about 22 million households in the UK (includes NI, Fit Is GB only) so that's about £16.22 per household in higher wholesale electricity costs.

Looking at the rate of growth it would double in four more years and double again eight years later. That's £32.50 and £75 a year in higher wholesale electricity costs.

For that sort of spending level it's hard to see how there aren't better options available, like free appliance upgrades for old appliances or more subsidised energy saving measures.

ctdctd

jimjames wrote: »

I thought it might be worth listing FIT registration suppliers and their address/locations for sending documents to in case we need to deliver by hand to ensure they get them in time.

E.ON UK
E.ON FIT Team
Caxton Road
Bedford
Bedfordshire

FIT Admin Team
npower
FREEPOST MID211 22/6
Worcester
WR4 9Z

British Gas
Feed'in'Tariff
97 Talbot'Road,Manchester M160TW.

So depending on your location you may be better off with one you can deliver to in person

This could be a very usefull post!

I'll add EDF to the list:-

Green Energy Team
Freepost RRYZ-BRTT-CBJS
EDF Energy
Osprey House
Osprey Road
Sowton Industrial Estate
Exeter
EX2 7WN

HalloweenJack

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Today's (Tuesday) BBC R4 "Farming Today" features land owners being "caught" by the premature cancellation of the FiT deal:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016ld4l#synopsis

The possible get outs are discussed.

solar has allways paid far far more than all other renewables:

http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Sustainability/Environment/fits/Documents1/Feed-in%20Tariff%20Table%201%20August%202011.pdf

solar is now comparable to wind turbines - and is still viable (in the right locations)

zeupater

jamesd wrote: »

From the consultation document the expected cost of the FiT is £357 million in 2014-5. There are about 22 million households in the UK (includes NI, Fit Is GB only) so that's about £16.22 per household in higher wholesale electricity costs.

Looking at the rate of growth it would double in four more years and double again eight years later. That's £32.50 and £75 a year in higher wholesale electricity costs.

For that sort of spending level it's hard to see how there aren't better options available, like free appliance upgrades for old appliances or more subsidised energy saving measures.

Hi

The real issue here is looking at solar pv in isolation ... yes, the figures are large ... yes, pv is inefficient and unschedulable ... yes, everyhousehold contributes to the subsidy .... now that that's out of the way, why not look at the whole picture.

In the energy sector - a few examples .... Nuclear is subsidised, nuclear decommissioning is subsidised and subsidies are also paid to windfarms, CCS research and many other areas. Capital expenditure on nuclear, conventional, hydroelectric and all other methods of generation is amortised over the cost of each kWh sold, as are the costs of the distribution network and absolutely everything else which adds cost to the suppliers.

Regarding the £16.22 which was calculated .... is it possible that this could be diluted by including private and public sector energy purchases in the pot ?

Looking at the figures calculated based on the rate of growth ... is this a rate of growth before the proposed FiT tariff, does it factor in revision as a result of the proposal, does it also factor in future planned annual and possible extraordinary reductions in the tariff ? ...

It all really comes down to whether people believe that subsidies work. Looking at history they obviously do in many cases, so, just taking television as an example, I would have loved to see similar general discussions when transmissions started in the '30s and when colour was introduced three decades later ... both examples of situations which required massive public support per viewer (almost exclusively the wealthy too !) until the licence fee resulted in the developments moving towards becoming self financing .... as a result of this foresight are there many households, including the poorest, which still don't have a TV, or is it still exclusively restricted to the wealthy ....

Anyway, for information, here's the historical relative cost of TV
licencing from Wikipedia .... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom_(historical)) .... it's interesting to see that as the number of TV licences increased from around 14000 in 1947 to over 21000000 in 2008 the relative cost of the fee has remained constant ...... there must have been a considerable subsidy early on ...

HTH
Z

magyar

That's a really good post Zeupater which has made me think.

I had always been thinking I dislike the way the poor are made to subsidise the rich via subsidies. However that is true of any subsidy. By definition you only subsidise things which are too expensive, and you make them just as affordable as you need to. In reality this makes them affordable only by rich people.

I think the point that many miss is that eventually all get to share in the benefits. Take mobile phones: for many years only the preserve of the rich, now for most people an essential item. Initially subsidised but expensive (actually by the Telcos, but in practice they were amortising this through call charges) and now - although still heavily subsidised - most people can afford one.

The real question is whether or not we think that home-based solar power in particular is a good thing to be subsidising. For me, the jury is still out on that one.